China: Safety last?

By Lisa WeaverCNN Beijing

(CNN) --More than two decades
into the swing of economic reform, the pursuit of profit often drives
construction and production too fast for safety regulators to keep up with
-- and China's labor force is paying the price.

China's mines are among the most dangerous in
the world, leading authorities to push for better, more enforceable
regulations.

Meanwhile entertainment and shopping facilities
often go up so fast that basic fire safety is overlooked -- a point
brought painfully home to the relatives of more than 300 people who died
in a blaze the day just after Christmas 2000 in the city of Luoyang in
Henan province.

It was among the worst fires of its kind in the
past decade and was made all the more deadly because of the poisonous
gases created when building materials in the lower floors of the building
rose to suffocate party goers in a top floor disco.

A few who dared to jump survived -- most died
of smoke inhalation. Many of the bodies were found piled at the disco's
only fire exit.

It was locked.

Last year's disco fire in Luoyang claimed more than 300 lives

More than 300 people crammed into the
ill-ventilated room with no fire escapes and no sprinklers.

Grieving relatives hit the streets in the days
that followed, peacefully protesting local inaction when it became clear
the building had repeatedly failed fire inspection, yet had been allowed
to operate.

Thousands of angry relatives in the streets of
Luoyang and lining up at the morgue to identify the bodies of their loved
ones reminded authorities that a lack of official accountability could
galvanize public sentiment.

Arrests were made and an investigation
launched.

A nationwide safety campaign was announced in
the days that followed -- but as in many other cases it was clear that
prevention, lay not in more regulations but in more consistent
enforcement.

Six years earlier, in December 1994, 323
people, most of them children, died in a concert hall blaze in the
Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China's far west.

Just a month before that, 233 were killed in a
dance hall in Liaoning province, many of them crushed or asphyxiated
inside emergency exits that were chained shut.

In China's worst fire on record, nearly 700
died in a 1977 blaze in Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Lethal mines

Thousands
of miners die every year in illegal Chinese mines

Then there are China's mines -- among the most
dangerous workplaces in the world.

In the worst recent mining disaster in
September 2000, 107 miners were killed in a mine explosion in the southern
province of Guizhou.

The will to improve mining safety, if not
always the methods, is high on the authorities' agenda.

In southern China alone, nearly 3,000 coalmines
have been closed in the past two years.

The safety sweep was a reaction to the high
casualties suffered by Chinese miners.

Many of the mines closed by authorities have
subsequently been reopened by their owners, eager to cream off the profits
to be had from China's insatiable demand for energy.

Local corruption and the payment of backhanders
often means officials are willing to look the other way.

Lax industrial safety

China's
labor force has had little legal fallback in the event of injury

China's official union umbrella group, the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions has been lobbying more actively for
worker safety in recent years, giving the issue a public face inside
China's network of state run enterprises and factories.

In these more established factories as well as
in privately run enterprises, the devastating human cost of cutting safety
corners is increasingly hard to hide.

In early 2001 a young woman who lost both arms
in a Shenzhen factory was awarded China's largest compensation payout.

The landmark resolution was a sign that legal
redress may begin to curb unsafe labor practices where regulations have
failed.

The Shenzhen Futian District Court in February
ruled that the Jinlong Woolen Down Cloth Factory pay 29 year old Liu Tao
HK $475,000 in damages.

But Liu was lucky.

Legal aid offices in China are flooded with
cases of migrant laborers who suffer horrific injuries on the job, but
often have no redress in a legal system just beginning to grapple with
civil claims.

China lacks an effective monitoring network for
safety abuses and efforts to set up independent labor unions are often met
with arrest.

In one case in late 2000 Cao Maobin, an
electrician in a state-owned silk factory in Jiangsu Province, lead
co-workers to lobby for better safety protection.

He was detained and subsequently held in a
psychiatric facility.

Your message has been successfully submitted and would be delivered to recipients shortly.